From "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" by Danusia Stok
The film tells the story of a boy who is executed by law after killing a taxi driver. Actually there is not much to say about the narrative of the movie, we don't know the reason why the boy killed the taxi driver, we know the legal basis for society to execute the boy, but we don't know the real human reason, I don't think we'll ever know.
I wanted to make this film precisely because it all happened in my name, I am a member of this society, I am a citizen of Poland. So in this country, if someone puts a noose around someone's neck, he's doing it in my name. I don't want that, I don't want them to. I think the real theme reflected in this film is not the death penalty, but the general phenomenon of murder. No matter why you kill, who you kill, or who commits the murder, murder is always wrong. I think that's the second reason I wanted to make this movie. The third reason is that I want to describe the world of Poland: a dark and scary world, a world where people have no sympathy for each other, a world where people hate each other, a world where people don't help each other instead of helping each other A world of dismantling, a world where people hate each other, a world where people live alone.
No matter where people live I think they are generally lonely. I can see this because I work abroad a lot. I've been in contact with young people in Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and many other countries, and I can see that the thing that bothers people the most is loneliness, and that's where people deceive themselves the most—because they don't want to admit that they're lonely. It's a fact that they have important things that no one talks to them; as everyday life becomes easier, things that used to be important like conversations, letter writing, real contact with another person, etc., It's gone now, which is also true. Everything becomes superficial. We are now making phone calls instead of writing letters. Tourism is not as romantic and adventurous as it used to be, instead, we just go to the airport, buy a ticket, and fly to another airport that is almost the same.
I feel more and more that while people are lonely, there are many people who want to make a fortune, distance themselves from others, and enjoy the luxury of loneliness. They want to live in a house far away from others, and they want to go to a big hotel where no one can sit on top of them and no one can hear them talking. This is really a contradiction. On the one hand, people are very afraid of being alone, and when I ask people "what's your real fear", I often hear the answer, "I'm afraid of being alone," and of course there are also people who say they're afraid of dying, but Now, the vast majority of people say, "I'm afraid of being alone, I'm afraid of being alone." But at the same time, they have an urge to be independent. All the characters in the movie "Murder Short" live alone and can't actually do anything, they can't decide anything but their own destiny
I don't know what the Poles want, I know what they fear. They are afraid of tomorrow because they don't know what will happen tomorrow. What if someone wants to assassinate the Prime Minister tomorrow? What if this happened in the UK? Assuming they succeed in killing the British Prime Minister, will that make a difference in people's lives? You still take the same bus or car to the same office in the morning, your colleagues and bosses are still there, everything is the same, and you probably go to the same restaurant for lunch. And in Poland, if the prime minister is assassinated, on that day, everything changes. I don't know if I'll still have a movie studio, if the phone still works, if my money's still worth it - it might become worthless because they can take it overnight Change. So anything can happen in Poland, and everyone is afraid that something bad will happen, so they are now trying to enjoy life as much as possible, which is a dangerous thing.
The story of "Murder Short" takes place in Warsaw, where the city and its surroundings are revealed in a special way. The film's cinematographer, Slywick Ichiak, used his special filter - he used a green filter - so the color of the entire film is a special green . Green is considered to be the color of spring, the color of hope, but with a green filter on the camera, the world is more brutal, darker, and more hollow. Everything was shot with filters, it was the photographer's idea. He made 600 filters because there are different filters for close-ups, mid-range lenses, dual lenses, etc., and different filters for indoors and outdoors. There are usually three filters on the camera, and at one point they fell out and the effect was very bizarre! There will be a scene in the movie: the boy hits the taxi driver in the head with a stick, and the driver's false teeth fall out. very exciting! We had to photograph these dentures anyway. The cameraman turned the camera sideways, and I threw those damn dentures into the mud 15 times, and I just couldn't get it right, and I finally made it. And just then, the filter fell out. We didn't realize what was going on until we first saw it on the screen. The dentures happened to be in their normal position in the mud when those filters fell out, but nothing could be seen until then. Neither dentures nor mud could be seen. Then I realized we were doing a horrible thing. I think the style of the cinematographer for this film fits its subject very well. That city is dirty, sad, empty. The people here are the same.
These techniques require very high accuracy when replicating. If the copying process is screwed up, the effect of these filters will look like dust. If you watch the theatrical version of "Murder Short" on TV, it looks like there's a technical glitch. If you record it and watch it on a VCR, you'll see the filters start to form some circles. why? Because the contrast becomes more pronounced on a TV, bright colors become brighter, and dark colors become darker. So these filters look as if a hole has been cut out, resulting in a very poor effect. The TV version of the fifth book of the Ten Commandments ("Murder Short") was made softer, and its copy was softer, so that the contrast was less pronounced. So on TV, even with more contrast, it doesn't look much different from the movie version on the screen.
There are two murder scenes in the film: the boy murdered the taxi driver in about seven minutes, and the law took five minutes to execute the boy. An American horror film expert told me that I broke the record for the longest murder scene in film history, 15 or 6 seconds longer than the previous one shot by an American.
We couldn't get a drop of blood from under the blanket over the taxi driver's head, which became a problem. We tried to get the blood there with some tubing, but it never worked. Since the crew didn't really like the actor who played the taxi driver, they kept pushing me to push him under the blanket, which was bound to bleed. But we didn't get to that point.
The execution scene was really hard to shoot because it was actually shot with one shot. The whole situation is like this: I described the whole scene, set up a scene inside the prison in the film studio, hired actors, they learned the lines to say and the plot to do, the cameraman designed the scene. light. In other words, everything was in place when I had them rehearse. During their rehearsal, I noticed everyone's knees were getting weaker and weaker, including myself. It was unbearable, we built everything ourselves, the motorists, the stand-ins, the photographers and my own, everybody's legs gave in along the way. It was around 11am and I had to stop filming and resume filming the next day. Even if it's a mock, this execution scene is really unbearable.
The film is an indictment of violence. Killing someone is probably the highest form of violence you can imagine. The death penalty also causes death. In this way we combine violence with the death penalty, and the film is against the death penalty as a form of violence.
The movie came out quite by accident at a time when people were arguing about the death penalty. We couldn't have foreseen this when we were writing the script, and we weren't even allowed to talk about the subject at the time. The debate arose later, and the film rightfully found its place. The new government in 1989 even suspended the death penalty for five years.
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